Trying to quantify TDZK according to 'Lanna's canon brings up some interesting results and implications. As far as a science fiction universe goes, it's pretty low-tier in the powerscale and puny in actual territory. Still, it managed to be big enough for us for nearly anything to happen.

But what if it's compared with other popular SF universes?

What do you think would happen if you crossed it over with:a. Battletech?b. Star Trek? c. Homeworld? d. Babylon 5?e. Mass Effect?

It was interesting, but reading it made my head hurt and reminded me why the writing and lore forums were ones that I never got hooked on, and rarely visited (amusing, considering the amount of fluff I could churn out without much prompting on any other subject in any other forum).

I suspect most of the people who may answer you will already be browsers of taenaria.com - although you may be pleasantly surprised, I'm always surprised as to who is perma-lurking here.

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.- Albert Einstein

Firefly is... actually a pretty interesting point. Military-wise, a civilization limited to single star system (though one with extremely complex orbital mechanics and some magical terraforming) isn't one that should seek conflict with one that encompassess hundreds of systems. However, when I contemplate the Andromedan Science Institute, the amoral research of the Blue Sun is often what comes to mind. They're powerful enough that the ASI is a member of the Federation parliament on par with the Races and Nexus Gateway territories. The Pleoria Nebula hides a lot of secrets...

Also, the symbol for ASI is blue, white and black.

If it wasn't for the possible wankitude of TDZK's tech base, it would be fun to write/ponder about humans meeting aliens, and aliens that are pretty much human (Derivians) and angels (Taenarians). A First Contact scenario involving Jayne can only end in tears and hilarity.

Last edited by bluepencil on May 25th, 2012, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it would be funny for a Alliance cruiser to give a support carrier attitude and then jumping in a dreadnought and several thousand interceptors and asking if the alliance captain (or whatever) would like to rephrase that.

Hmm. There's something which is rather prominent TDZK tech but Fleets doesn't model. How do you think Support Carriers actually provided support?

Drones.

Even a Frigate starts off with two squadrons (supposedly 12 each, iirc from 'Lanna, though it's only 10 per Hangar back in [the game] 2.x). A bog-standard Carrier from the old helpfiles carries with ten Drone Hangars in stock. One hundred drones. Since drones serve combat, repair, resource and recon roles, it only makes sense that either a Support Carrier should have more drone capacity than normal or be able to switch roles quickly. TDZK ships according to 'Lanna may be slow, at a delta-v of only 444 m/s, but that allows Drones to be much faster, and why there is the triad of defenses - drones, shields, armor. A proper fleet battle could start off with clouds of thousands of AI-driven drone fighters boiling away in the void.

Interceptors are light warships, not fightercraft equivalents.

Unless we take it for granted that Fleets ships have to be qualitatively inferior to TDZK main galaxy ships, in which case Interceptors, Gunships and such get to be non-FTL assault craft.

Do Alliance Cruisers even -have- point defenses? Having intact sensors are quite necessary to aim fuckoff main guns.

With Mass Effect, they have short-ranged GARDIAN laser grids that render them nearly immune to thin-skinned fightercraft attack.On the other hand, TDZK combat drones do have laser cannons of their own, which are not affected by kinetic barriers.

According to the Fleets guide, Interceptor designs are adaptations of Scourge War era designs and the Sentinel cruiser is a raider design that predates the Scourge War. With a constant distance of 3 hexes between center and outlying planetary systems in each meta, either the Fleets ships have varying FTL speeds or the systems are really close together.

As for the Alliance cruiser, I would imagine it has more to defend it's 40000 passengers and crew than two squadrons of gunships. They're people that the Alliance likes after all, and there's ex-browncoats and reavers everywhere. On the other hand, politicians can be extremely short-sighted and may feel very secure about how much threat reavers and smugglers provide.

Why 1.3 ly/hex? Where did you derive that? Planets only form within light-hours away from their star. Technically speaking, an entire star system can be contained within one hex. The Oort Cloud is only 5 light-months away.

Now, if everybody cruises at .5c, and cruise speed is limited by mass (which is canon), all ships can putz around a star system without worry. The distance between stars may have been cut/wiped away since fleets is about fleet battles, not waiting for fleets to arrive. It's like watching the Millenium Falcon drifting along and making repairs until they reached Cloud City instead of switching cameras to Luke Skywalker's training.

Anyway, most Reaver ships tend to be little more than armed-up civilian craft. They're the barbarians of the frontier, but lacking any real spacebuilding industry and a population grown limited by their own psychoses, should really not be a threat on to the same level as the rebels who could use Alliance-grade equipment. It's not like you can have sympathy or willing defectors/spies for the Reavers.

Each planet hex is a "Planetary System" in the hex information panel, so yes each is entirely contained within a hex. Given the variation of ore/crystal/fuel within similar hex types, I would assume the general type reflects the predominant feature of the hex. Planetary systems would certainly qualify as predominant. Also, the center of the meta is a planet; if it were actually a stellar object, it'd be rather questionable to put your starting colony in close orbit around it.

1.35 ly makes a standard distance of 4.05 ly from center to fringe of meta with variations ranging from 2.7 ly to 12.15 ly (dual fringe and center to center). Also makes for nice round numbers with everything else. Cruise speeds using these distances would be painful. Compressing the distances would work, I suppose, but would seem odd.

If we keep your .06 ly/day as newer designs and .03 ly/day for older designs, that might work. As interceptors are newer design than at least sentinel cruisers it could be that the older designs can't be retrofitted with more efficient FTL because the interceptor design doesn't scale up and the cruisers are too small to be fitted with the special engines that boost flagships' speed. I may be stretching too far with that one though.

And it's unlikely that Reavers would swarm as in the movie unless baited into it by someone both insane enough and functional enough to both try it and get away with it. And there's probably not much reason for any rebels to attack a Cruiser, there's no way to capture it. In any case the faction would have to have enough firepower to overcome the gunships and yet avoid being detected. So it might be down to someone in power planning for the unseen and thus paying for something that would never be used. So maybe the gunships are all. I don't recall anything in the series that indicates more.

Hmm. I thought I remembered seeing stars in Fleets, but probably I was just conflating it with the old system map.

Cruise speed is sublight without relativistic distortion. While technically it might be possible to have generation ships with that (a decade of coldsleep is acceptable) that would only really work for an interstellar civilization if they could build Jump Gates on the far end. Realistically though, even .03 and .06 ly/day is already pretty good. That's Warp 2 for Star Trek. Jump Gate FTL is already Warp 8.

When stars are months apart, it's like the Imperial Age in SPACE! Who gets to play Space Britain?

Or how about Space Romans against Space Carthaginians?

The slowness of FTL could necessitate moving in force and have fleets be mostly self-sustaining. Resourcing is important because they need to manufacture new munitions and power cells on the go.

Regarding construction speed, it's close to canon. Frigates are 12-30 days, Destroyers (in ye olde TDZK, bigger than Cruisers, naff) and Carriers for 120-160 days. Real-life shipbuilding is faster, but then again they're just floating metal hulls instead of needing a Fusion Reactor and a variety of subsystems.

(sigh)

Homeworld builds million-ton hulls in just 15 days. Fightercraft in two minutes. Fusion missiles in Missile Destroyer integrated assembly bays every five seconds. They're the only things slower sublight than TDZK.

I've made the parallel between Fleets and Civ before to Jerle. Being simpler and more casual is probably why I keep coming back to Fleets and had forgotten I'd managed to find my Civ4 disc and installed it on this computer.